Jackson ATX

The ATX is part of the line that was pretty much kept overseas for the most part. Very few of these were able to make it over here, and not a lot of people know about them. That said, there is nothing really special about them that warrants them to be imported, in my opinion. The guitar features a basswood body with a veneer maple top, a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets, sharkfin inlays, a licensed floyd rose bridge, HSH configuration, one volume, one tone and a five way switch.

UTILIZATION

The guitar is pretty decent overall. The frets on this were quite nice. The edges weren't too sharp, so you didn't have that issue of slicing your hand every time you moved it up and down the neck. The tops were properly crowned, and they were shiny as well. A lot of these older guitars have oxidized frets which means you gotta take 0000 steel wool to them to shine them up, but this one seems to have been taken care of. I was able to get some pretty good action on the guitar, too. The fact that they're using a veneer top is kind of disappointing, and I've never been a fan of veneers. The bridge on this is a cheap licensed floyd rose, and it doesn't really work that great. I've had these slip in and out of tune before, have seen stripped base plates and all kinds of other issues as well.

SOUNDS

The guitar had an EMG 85 in the neck, an EMG S in the middle and an EMG 81 in the bridge. These obviously weren't stock pickups, but they were a welcomed edition if you're into metal. The 81 in the bridge works quite well, although I'm not a huge fan of it in basswood. I tend to like the 81 in mahogany the most, followed by alder and finally basswood. The S in the middle is cool for clean tones, and it helps out for that funky kind of sound at times, but I never really liked it in combination with the humbuckers. The 85 in the bridge is awesome for lead tones, and thanks to the basswood body, the leads were super smooth and warm. Legato was a breeze, but alternate picking kinda got a bit lost at times.

OVERALL OPINION

The guitars are decent if you happen to find one, but they need a bit of work. You'll want to at least replace the pickups in the models and maybe even the floyd with a higher quality one. Once you do that, you'll have a pretty good playing guitar, assuming you like basswood for your Jacksons I generally prefer basswood on my Ibanez guitars instead of my Jackson ones, but that's me.